Column: Looking for a sign of the new year

Susan Harrison Wolffis It was dark as night Tuesday, even though the clock insisted it was only 5:30 in the afternoon. Maybe it was the day’s mood, dreary as the weather. Maybe it was because daylight is in such short supply this time of year, leaving us all yearning, but it seemed later than it really was.

I was on my way home after a busy day. Everyone on the road was in a rush, cars jockeying for position, headlights glaring, tempers a little short. I found myself tapping the steering wheel, a little impatiently, I admit. A guy was on my back bumper, trying to tailgate me into a faster speed, but there was no negotiating the matter. There was no room; no extra space; no place to go.

I was going as fast as I could; still time was running out.

Truer words never thought; tis the season.

What a year it’s been, difficult all the way around, in so many ways. I’ve had more people than ever before tell me they’re not in the holiday mood this year. They’re weary, can’t quite muster the Christmas spirit, feel time slipping by.

Me? I’ve been watching for a sign, waiting for a harbinger of the new year, afraid I’d miss it, concerned I wouldn’t see it in the midst of life’s chaos.

But there it was Tuesday, ready for a witness.

As I made the turn off what we call the Spider Web around here, that piece of road that leads drivers going north onto the Causeway, there stood Steve Beck, holding his peace sign for all to see.

It was his first vigil in a year.

Many of us who travel the Causeway know Steve’s story. One day in 2006, he was driving home from his job as a title officer at Transnation Title in Muskegon, when he decided — almost on a whim — that he had to do something to protest the war in Iraq.

He decided to stop.

As luck would have it, he had a sign in his car, one he’d carried at a peace rally in Whitehall a few months earlier. The sign was left over, but not discarded, from a rally he’d attended for the unsuccessful presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry. He turned the cardboard over, and on one side, he drew a peace symbol, straight out of the 1960s. On the other, he wrote: No war.

It was the first time he’d ever done anything like that, but he had both political, and personal, reasons for his public statement.

He lifted the sign with a heavy heart every time, remembering a high school buddy killed in Vietnam, anticipating the thousands of American men and women who would lose their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For three years, he stood vigil at the Causeway whenever the spirit moved him, usually after work for half an hour to 45 minutes before heading home to supper. He was a powerful presence, one man’s insistent plea for peace.

Last year, he stopped after the presidential election, full of hope, full of expectations for peace.

But when President Obama announced plans for the troop surge in Afghanistan, Steve Beck he felt like he “had to do something again.” His stand on war is the same, no matter who sits in the White House.

On Tuesday, Steve stood alone in the chaos of rush hour on the Causeway, a 58-year-old grandfather in a business suit and ear muffs, flashing the peace sign at passersby who honked their horns in support. He returned again Wednesday.

For those of us looking, his sign of peace was impossible to miss, a sign to take into the new year.